


Darkness

by turntechCorvid



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Flashbacks, Hallucinations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 09:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12791301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turntechCorvid/pseuds/turntechCorvid
Summary: Lup awakens to the inky black walls of the Umbrastaff. She's going to be okay. She's going to get out. She has to.





	Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> This fic features a lot of unreality and flashbacks so if that is potentially upsetting please take care!

Lup awakens to a room full of inky, unwelcoming black. She immediately recognizes it as the curtained walls of the Umbrastaff, her prison for over a decade. She stands up from the bed she’s on and watches as it disappears from behind her.

“Barry?” she calls into the endless walls around her.

“Taako?” she tries, quieter this time. He doesn’t like yelling now, it always makes him flinch.

She crumples to the ground, breathing quick and uneven.

Okay. So she’s in the Umbrastaff again. This isn’t a big deal (it is). Taako remembers her now (he doesn’t). Barry will find her (he’s trapped in the cave again). Lucretia will come looking for her (she thinks Lup is dead). The Umbrastaff is broken (it isn’t), this isn’t real (it is). She’s going to be alright. She’s going to get out of here. She has to get out of here.

She continues to argue back and forth with herself, only delving further and further into panic. This isn’t working, she needs to try something else. Look for evidence that she’s not in the staff.

Step one. Look at herself. Hands. That’s a good start. She has hands. They’re trembling and missing the numerous scars from years of cooking as well as the small stick and poke heart that matches the one on Taako’s hand. Lich forms don’t have hands. If she was a lich she’d have bones. She has hands instead of bones so she isn’t a lich and she can’t be in the Umbrastaff.

Step two. Look at what she has. Her transmutation ring on her finger, a small bag of holding in her pocket, and her wand. If she’s in the staff she won’t be able to cast a spell. She stands up and looks at the details of the wand, assuring herself it’s real.

Step three. Do some magic. She stands up, readies her wand, and tries the cantrip dancing lights. It works and she shapes them into a vaguely human shape in front of her. She breathes a sigh of relief and a few tears fall.

She feels a hand on her shoulder and a vague, distant voice.

“Lup? Lup, it’s four in the morning,” he says.

“Barry?”

“Yes. What do you see right now?” he asks.

“There’s a long hallway, black curtains, and just me. I-” she can’t speak any further. “You're not real,” she says before going back to square one and forgetting all her evidence that this was fake.

“I’m going to hug you now.”

She feels arms around her. She closes her eyes and wraps them around the voice, feeling someone solid and warm that conflicts with the idea that he's just imagined from loneliness. He smells like the aftershave she likes. She opens them and finally sees Barry.

“You’re not in the Umbrastaff,” he says as he rubs comforting circles over her back, “It’s been broken for over a year then Taako burnt it. There’s also no umbrellas in the house. You’re at Magnus’ house over the ruins of Raven’s Roost. Can you speak?”

She nods.

“What do you see?”

“Everything is the same but I see you now.”

“You’re doing great,” he says before kissing her on the forehead.

He leads her to sit down on something.

“Can you see the bed?”

She feels over the texture of the blankets and looks at the individual threads once they start to come into focus. She nods.

“Can you see the chair the cantrip's lights are beside?”

“No. Give me a minute.”

She focuses on imagining her and Barry’s room from Raven’s roost. There’s a chair in one corner that has a stack of laundry she needs to put up, bookshelves of Necromancy and Evocation books lining a wall, a painting Lucretia gave them for last Candlenights. She continues thinking about details, trying to bring everything into focus again.

Slowly she can see it all again, the room coming back into focus and the curtained walls fading away. She begins crying from relief.

“Well that fucking sucked,” she says half-laughing and half-crying.

“Can you see everything again?”

“Yeah. I’m not going back to sleep.”

“I’m gonna go make us hot chocolate.”

“Hang on, let me come with you. Things will go to shit the second you leave.”

She follows him to the kitchen. As he pulls out the ingredients for hot chocolate, the good kind she taught him to make, she sits at the table. She watches him, making sure he doesn’t leave her sight.

He gets a few of the measurements off while he cooks but not in a way that’ll ruin the drink. She won’t mind a little extra vanilla. She sneaks behind him, wrapping him in a hug and kissing his neck. She gives him pointers here and there, making sure the milk doesn’t burn or scald. It almost does when he’s distracted by her occasional kissing.

They sit in the living room with their drinks, stealing the loveseat Taako and Kravitz they always take once they wake up and inevitably fall back asleep. When they’re done with the hot chocolate Barry falls asleep holding Lup while she digs into a book Angus left on the coffee table.

It’s light out by the time she’s done and Taako comes into the room.

“Rough night?” he asks.

“A little bit. Barry made hot chocolate so it wasn’t the worst.”

He sits next to her, cuddling her alongside Barry. They’re all a bit squished together but she doesn’t mind.

“I thought I was in the Umbrastaff again,” she says once he settles next to her.

“How you feeling?”

“Like shit. I’m not letting go of you or Barry for the rest of the day.”

“Looks like Kravitz has to get his own coffee and join the cuddle pile then.”

“Get boy wonder and Magnus in here too and we’ll be set.”

“You know if Magnus is here so is Johann. There’s no way we’re fitting six people and a dog on this couch.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

Taako grabs a blanket from the shelf under the coffee table and pulls it over the three of them.

“You should try to sleep,” he says.

“Good advice from someone who stays up all night baking all the time.”

“We ignore my personal failings as an elf when I’m trying to help.”

She laughs. “I’ll go to sleep, just promise you or Barry won’t let me go until I wake up.”

“I promise.”

At that she closes her eyes and sinks into a comforting darkness.


End file.
